Certainly the Soviet Union was expansionist, but many of its top functionaries were not from Russia. Stalin and Kaganovich, responsible for the Holodomor, were from Georgia and Ukraine.
Other leaders like Brezhnev were born in Ukraine or had ties to it. A Georgian woman alleges to be Putin's mother (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Putina) and looks quite similar on the Wikipedia photo.
Brezhnev considered himself Russian, as did Khrushchev.
Kaganovich's background is more complex, but that's splitting hairs.
What's more important is that, to a first order approximation -- the way the SU conducted itself geopolitically was as a continuation of the Russian empire. Including in particular the strategy of maintaining as many buffer / vassal states between itself and perceived competitors as possible. And as holiday resorts, etc.
Which is of course basically Putin's strategy, and his prime motivation for subjugating / neutralizing Ukraine as well.
Russia I know least about (in my list) so I could be wrong there. Maybe it's more like the West than I imagined. But Georgia is kind-of what I meant by "if you come from the edge of".
Are there people from Japan, or Somalia, who many Russians (and the newspapers) would unthinkingly refer to as Russian? (Not a rhetorical question!)
a bit of nitpicking —
but the Soviet Union never really had predominantly Russian leadership, which would be disproportionate to the Russian part of the Soviet population.
Lenin was from a Russian noble but ethnically diverse family.
Stalin was a Georgian and spoke Russian with an incredibly thick accent to the end of his life.
Khrushchev and Brezhnev were Ukrainians, and so on.
But I get your point, and now it makes more sense to me.
I see in Putin more of that monarchist strain — chauvinism from the times of Imperial Russia, which indeed was so much focused on that "RRR-Russian" identity, much more "blood and soil" ideology. And add to that Late Soviet
state "efficiency".
Yes, but the thing is that Poland and Ukraine did not really want to be a part of the evil empire. It just enabled some ambitious people who were not russian to raise to a leadershio position.
If a high ranking leader would have been estonian then you still could not say that because of this the soviet union would be "less russian" or something. Most of the people, officials, party members etc were russian and the soviet union was born from the russian empire.
Soviets != Russia, yes the USSR was sort of a new iteration of The Russian Empire, but you can't call armenians, ukrainians, georgians and so on russians this simply wrong
But this region seemed to be majority Russian speaking, ethnically/culturally Russian. So there might be grassroots support in these regions to be a part of Russia.
My mother was born in the former Soviet Union and I have a lot of relatives and friends that immigrated from Russia and nearby countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus) that share some similarities in culture.
My hometown was also originally founded by Russian immigrants and has a large minority (~30% I think) of people of Russian descent.
I've known several people from Croatia, Latvia, Georgia and now Ukraine. They all look down upon Russians and are easily offended when people refer to them as such.
Definitely no love loss for Putin or Russia among them.
My understanding is that there are countries bordering Russia (Georgia, Azerbaijan for ex) that have fairly open immigration processes for Russian ex-pats, and very extensive Russian language communities.
And the reach of Russian authorities is unlikely to extend into Georgia at least.
Absolutely, whether internally or externally. Many of them got a Hitler in the early 1940s and could have very well gotten the actual Stalin in the late 1940s. Crimea and Georgia got a Putin not long ago, but the rest of Ukraine managed to fight him off for now it seems. Looks like Hong Kong is about to get a Xi. It happens all the time, all over the world and has for all of civilization.
Kaganovich, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Gorbachev were from Ukraine or had Ukrainian ties.
Stalin, Beria, Putin were/are from Georgia or had Georgian ties.
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